Jurong Bird Park in Singapore is an entire zoo filled with nothing but birds. That sounded pretty interesting, so on July 14th I decided to try it out. On the way there I stopped for lunch at a Chinese dumpling place. Bad idea! More on that later. For now, let’s see what I could do with the 18-200mm VR and my D90!

The Birds & Buddies show, which I caught just after arriving, was awesome. I could do a whole article about that, but for now I’ll settle for a few photos. First up: did you know that birds can play basketball? First one to sink 4 shots wins!

The next birds were just too fast. Even with ISO 1600 (above which it gets too grainy for me), they were still a wee bit blurry with wide-open aperture.

The birds-of-prey show had a bit more light. This show was also fantastic! They used fake baits (like a mock-rabbit with a piece of meat in it, and this rubber snake) with the trained birds.

Tropical birds ruled the park. There were more brightly-colored fancy-birds than anything else. Lots of fop-and-dandy avians like these preening pretty-boys…

And now one for the ladies among my audience. I waited a long time to get the perfect pose of these two black swans with their white-feathered baby. I didn’t know that was possible!? Maybe the little tyke is adopted.

This is one bird for the catwalk. Natural sequins, and such stunning eyes! She was so tame, too; I was about four feet away when taking this photo. Make a turn, baby… show us the back of that dress!

These two were getting friendly. And I must admit, there were children watching… two or three others, besides me.

About this time, I was feeling unusually tired. On the bus ride home, it only got worse. Let’s just say, I don’t recommend the dumpling place I tried near Lorong Stangee and East Coast Road. Something I ate there caused a few hours of serious distress.

Because of the dumplings, I postponed my plans to visit the Night Safari. But rest assured, awesome shots of animals at night will be coming up soon!

June 27th was a ten miler. At least, by the end of the day I felt like I’d walked ten miles. Nijo Castle, in the center of Kyoto, was definitely worth the trip – although I was a bit disappointed on a few counts. So don’t get quite as excited as I did beforehand.

You can’t take photos inside the castle. The “Nightingale Floors,” designed to squeak with each step to alert the Shogun to intruders, don’t squeak much anymore (and sound nothing like a bird). And in the very nice gardens, 80% of the paths were roped off – so views and camera angles were quite limited.

On the upside, it’s very old, has a rich history, and is quite a beautiful work of architectural art. Here’s my attempt an an artistic shot of Nijo Castle sans tourists.

And one of the gardens, filled with very traditionally-pruned trees:

I also visited the Manga Museum (no photos allowed), and the Kyoto Gyoen National Garden where the Imperial Palace is located (not open to tourists, but sometimes private tours).

While in the garden, I saw a cluster of Japanese with massive cameras pointed at the canopy of a huge camphor tree. I joined this crowd of 400mm f/4 lenses with my puny 200mm f/5.6, and managed to spot this guy. If I’d known Japanese, I would have asked to try the big Nikon (it was around 400-600mm, not sure). Here’s the sharpest I could do without a tripod, using my 18-200mm VR.

Did I mention that I love Japanese Maples? Especially the red-leafed ones!

I’ll just include one shot from Arashiyama Monkey Park, where some very tame Japanese Monkeys (also known as Snow Monkeys) live. I still have to email the monkey family this portrait. You have no idea how long it took the parents to get their little one to stay still for the camera.

Tomorrow I visit the first city in human history to be nuclear bombed. What is Hiroshima like now, and how do they portray their grisly legacy? I’ll do my best to show you.

Strangely enough, the best time to see bats in Sydney is the middle of the day. They all sleep in the park! Apparently it’s a big problem, because they damage the trees they roost in.

I took some photos for a friend in the hostel on June 8th, and thought I’d share them here as well. These are some seriously huge bats!

I didn’t expect too much when a few bats took to the air. But my trusty Nikon D90 and 18-200mm VR did not disappoint. With a fast shutter and a bit of cropping, I managed to get this.

Okay, now that your skin is crawling, I’ll drop it down a notch. (Sorry, Emeril). Here’s what else I’ve got for today. I’m gonna say the bokeh has blurred this kid’s face enough for privacy. “What you doin’ on my walkway, mate?”

Now for the night shots! I’ll just put a few of the best ones. All are long exposures requiring a tripod, with ISO of 400 or lower to avoid noise. Here’s the Sydney Opera House, lit up on the side facing Circular Quay. The colors are projected in an ever-changing video.

Majestic downtown Sydney:

And finally a nice combination of the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge.

If you’re interested in how to take nighttime photos, check some other articles on the blog where I explain a bit about it (e.g. Paris at Night). There will also be a post up shortly about night pics taken from Sydney Tower. Or just leave a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to answer your question!

Going to Hawaii? I hope you will visit Kauai, known as “The Garden Island.”

It’s perhaps the most beautiful place on earth.

Great, you’re visiting Kauai? You have to go on a helicopter tour. Seeing the entire island by helicopter is a must, even if it means saving for another month or two before making your trip.

Now… you’ve found out there are a dozen helicopter tour operators. Which one to choose? Take my advice, because as a skydiver, I have a lot of small aircraft experience. I’m very safety-oriented, and you should be, too. So don’t go for the cheapest tour (that often means cutting corners to cut costs!).

After my experience this week, I can recommend 100% that you fly with Island Helicopters. Their prices are very reasonable, considering you are flying with one of the safest operators on the island. You will fly in a well-maintained aircraft piloted by the best, and it’s all organized very professionally.

Thanks to the whole staff, especially my pilot Isaac! Even with a bit of turbulence, I felt completely safe with him at the controls.

Now, what will you see? Everything. The tour circles the entire island! Many of the areas are inaccessible by car, and would take days of tough hiking to reach by foot (if possible to reach at all). I did manage to duplicate one of the helicopter views while hiking – it was 11 miles on foot and nearly a whole day. There were dozens of views like this in under an hour on the heli tour!

Here are a few key vistas that really struck me, although you might have a different favorite spot.

The archway that James Bond flew through in “The Man with the Golden Gun,” on the nearly-inaccessible Na Pali coast:

Manawaiopuna Falls, a private waterfall used in the beginning of “Jurassic Park”:

You can also take a helicopter tour that lands at Jurassic Falls, and have your picture taken there. This tour is only available through Island Helicopters, as they have an exclusive deal with the private landowner!

The tour with the landing costs (as of this writing) $299 on Spring Special, as opposed to $178 for the standard 50-60min “Deluxe Tour.” But if you’re a movie buff, waterfall fan, or just want to do something special – this waterfall landing tour is for you!

Here’s another unreal coastline view:

And in case you need more convincing, here’s Wailua Falls. I had driven there the day before. The view from the lookout (where you see the road in this photo) was really disappointing, so I was thrilled to have this amazing view from the helicopter!

Why do I recommend a helicopter tour? Because it’s the most amazing thing I’ve done on the islands so far!

Why fly with Island Helicopters? Their excellent safety record. A fantastic helicopter with the biggest windows. Custom left-side pilot seat so you get a better view (flying clockwise around the island). Their focus on safety throughout the trip. Friendly and professional staff. BOSE noise cancelling headsets with pilot narration. Exclusive Jurassic Falls landing. Did I mention great safety record?

There must be a reason that this company has been hired to fly camera for movies such as Jurassic Park, Tropic Thunder, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Six Days/Seven Nights, and many more. Good enough for feature films = an awesome tour for your digital SLR! Note, all the pictures in this article were taken by me on the tour with my Nikon D90 / 18-200mm VR. So with a bit of care, you can really get some great shots.

If you do go to Kauai and try a helicopter tour, please let me know how you liked it! I hope you’ll have the same amazing experience that I did with Island Helicopters.

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Disclaimer: this article is a promotion for Island Helicopters. However, all my opinions of the flight and the operation are unbiased judgments based on my experience.

For the squeamish readers, you may want to stop now. This post is about things that might make your skin crawl, like a big, hairy spider the size of a lumberjack’s hand. Personally, I loved playing hide-and-seek with the jungle insects in the Tambopata Reserve:

This guy was really beautiful, especially up close. The short focal distance of the 18-200mm VR lens definitely helped get magnified, sharp shots.

I caught this stick insect in the middle of a meal, as he was munching on a leaf:

Another stick insect we saw was just hiding in plain sight. If I weren’t an intelligent species I really would have mistaken him for a twig:

Last, but not least – in fact, the largest of the night’s finds – this huge spider, which was (no exaggeration) bigger than my hand:

In case that isn’t enough to give you nightmares, here’s a close-up of the body. Mu-hahaha!

Sweet dreams! Surprisingly, I slept quite well that night at Explorer’s Inn, even knowing that I might wake up to a tarantula in my shower.

My full day in the Amazon rainforest at Explorer’s Inn started early, with a 5am wakeup (May 15th) just as the howler monkeys started their calls. We wanted to be on the trail by 6am to spot jungle animals on our way to Cocococha, an oxbow lake formed by a cut-off bend of a river in the Tambopata reserve.

Our guide’s strategy worked! Along the way we met a group of Saddleback Tamarin Monkeys (also known as the kissing monkey, because of the noise they make). They were quite curious and posed for us until we headed on our way. Can you see the bug in this picture?

Apparently in this species the fathers take care of the babies, who often ride on their backs.

Along the trail we spotted a lot more fauna than this, but I just can’t show everything now. There is too much for one post. At Cocococha Lake, we took to the canoes and saw a family of Giant River Otters. One of them caught a tasty meal:

Then, we were lucky enough to see a very rare sight: another kind of otter that is almost never spotted in this area. Our guide identified it from my photo as a Neo-Tropical Otter:

Can I just say that I love my Nikon D90 and 18-200mm VR lens? Okay, an expensive 70-200 f/2.8 would be better for nature photography, but just look at this guy. Beautiful.

Here’s another interesting denizen of the jungle, the Hoatzin. It’s known locally as the “Stinky Bird,” though we weren’t quite close enough to smell it:

I’ve got dozens more great pictures of frogs, ants, lizards, and plants. But here’s one more for today: the Pink-Toed Tarantula. What would you do if this were waiting in your shower in the afternoon? That’s exactly what happened to one of our group!

I’ll stop here for now, though I might do another post about this day, just to throw in a few of the amazing insects and spiders we saw on our night walk. Thanks again to Noemi for her excellent guiding and fauna spotting!

On May 14th, I departed by plane from Cusco, Peru to the town of Puerto Maldonado – starting point for Amazon jungle expeditions! Arrive to Puerto Maldonado via Cusco (conveniently, Cusco is the starting point for visiting Machu Picchu, Peru’s main attraction).

I was lucky in this stage of my travels. On the plane I met a nice Dutch woman, and we talked about our jungle plans. My answer: “Uhm, I have no plans. Just a list of good jungle lodges from a guidebook.” Fortunately, she already had plans with the first (and now in my opinion foremost) of the jungle lodges: Explorer’s Inn.

It is because of research done at Explorer’s Inn (see the research website at Fauna Forever) that the Tambopata National Reserve near Puerto Maldonado was created. Even now, it is the only jungle lodge in the reserve. I decided to go for it.

At the airport I asked the tour guide if they had space; he smiled and said “Let’s go to the office.” A short bus ride later, I met lead researcher Chris from Fauna Forever and signed up for a two night stay. We headed off through the backwater town of Puerto Maldonado toward our boat. After 1h on the bus and 1h on the boat, we would arrive at our destination.

Here’s where it becomes difficult. Which couple of shots do I show out of (ahem) two gigabytes of amazing photos – all wild animals spotted in their natural rainforest habitat?

I’m just going to show a few of the best photos from each day, for now. Later on (perhaps after the trip) I’ll revisit this topic and put up galleries of each kind of animal: mammals, butterflies, insects, birds, and so forth.

Here’s a spectacled caiman from our night trip up the river:

And here are two choice shots of the night sky. These were both taken with my Nikon D90, 18-200mm VR lens, and 2s timer (to let the camera stabilize after my finger pressed the shutter). First one is the Milky Way! ISO 6400, f/3.5, 30s:

Hard to believe we are just short-lived individuals of the dominant species on a single planet orbiting a mid-sized star, just like thousands of other stars in the one arm of our galaxy that you see here.

Anyway, here’s my lucky shot of the night. I was shining my headlamp on the palm to make a pretty scene when a shooting star graced my D90’s sensor with its photons (see upper right corner):

I feel like a big geek after those last two paragraphs, so I’m going to stop here. That’s what I did that evening, as well. I had to get some sleep, because we had an early wake-up for the morning’s jungle trek. Like Machu Picchu, I didn’t need an alarm clock. But instead of the Incas’ Revenge, I had a nice jungle native as my alarm clock at Explorer’s Inn…

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This winter (or spring, rather?) I went to my first hardboot snowboard carver meetup. Carving Masters in Soelden was fantastic fun! The weather was good for 3 of 4 days. I demoed snowboards from Virus, Apex, F2, Goltes, and Oxess.

Most of the time I talked in German, so I really improved my skillz. We stayed in a great Pension (Bed & Breakfast) that was quite cheap, and right in the town center.

Here are a couple of choice still photos:

And, a gallery with the best few photos of each person that passed by:

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Action photos were taken with a Nikon D90 and the 18-200mm VR lens. Should anyone want a full-res photo of themselves, just leave a comment here and tell me which rider you are! Videos may have to wait a few months until I’m back from my round-the-world trip.

Thanks to all the organizers at Frozen Backside, and to the vendors who made such a great effort and let us try their boards free of charge!

I can highly recommend staying at Pension Andre Arnold in Soelden. Clean and modern rooms, an excellent location, and a reasonable price. It’s run by a 4-time pro world ski champion! Imagine winning the world championships 4 years in a row from 1978-1981. Impressive.

Try “Die Alm” at your own risk – we had the most rude service ever from the bartender there. Literally, I’ve never seen such bad service in my entire life, except perhaps once in Blacksburg, VA when a waitress told us (when our food was VERY slow coming) “It’ll come when it comes. I don’t run the kitchen.”